Flaman Agriculture Blog

Dec 4, 2017

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a crop infection that has traditionally been found in Manitoba. Over the past three years, it has begun to spread and is moving west through the prairies. According to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, FHB was found in 98 percent of wheat and 97 percent of durum samples in 2016 (Fusarium Management Guide).
The Flaman Grain Cleaning team travelled to Melfort, Saskatchewan to take part in a Fusarium Management workshop presented by NARF at the Canadian Ag Research Farm. Here are the top 6 things you need to know in order to manage the...

Nov 9, 2017

Harvest 2017 was a tough year for many Saskatchewan farmers.
Doug Jones of Whitby Farms was one of Saskatchewan's first to wrap up harvest 2017. He says it's thanks to a prototype loaner combine -- one of two sent for field testing in Western Canada -- on top of the two he runs every other year. And a family team that works together year round.
The Flaman Agriculture team caught up with Doug while he had a few fleeting moments of free time on his hands. We talked about what effect this years' terrible drought conditions had on...

Jul 21, 2017

We’re going on a Field Trip! On Tuesday, July 25th 2017, we’re off to Melfort Research Farms, located 1.6 miles south of Melfort, Sk on Hwy 6. They are putting on a morning event all about Fusarium Head Blight. With two industry experts to walk you through all the activities and information, the day is scheduled to start at 9AM and topics include:
Fusarium Head Blight Biology
Effects of FHB on Cereal Crops
Optimal Application Technology
How to Improve Grade Out of the Field
PLUS! Bring your Grain Samples and have it cleaned and tested! If you have a sample...

May 30, 2017

Aerial imaging can be used as a good indicator of crop health. The emergence of drone technology makes this process more affordable, and accessible. A drone accompanied with a remote sensor, and the NDVI graphical indicator, is all you need to gain useful information on the health of your crop.
The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a simple graphical indicator that can be used to analyze remote sensing measurements, typically but not necessarily from a space platform, and assess whether the target being observed contains live green vegetation or not.
NDVI was one of the most successful of many attempts to simply...

May 18, 2017

Trials have shown reduced disease with a chickpea-flax intercrop, â€¨but some are skeptical about a mustard-pulse
Growers might have noticed healthier crop stands where wild mustard was present.
“There are a lot of anecdotes where they said the only place where they had any kind of lentils worth harvesting is where they had some wild mustard weeds. The lentils were climbing up the wild mustard and they did better under those conditions than where there wasn’t mustard or canola,” said Lana Shaw, crop researcher at South East Research Farm.
Shaw said she also had good results with a small trial...